Werner Israel

Werner Israel (born October 4, 1931 in Berlin ) is a Canadian physicist.

Live and act

Werner Israel was born in Berlin, Germany and grew up in Cape Town , South Africa . There he studied at the University of Cape Town ( B.Sc. 1951, M.Sc. 1954). In 1960 he received his PhD from Trinity College , Dublin .

In 1967 Werner Israel was the first to prove a so-called no-hair theorem . This theorem of uniqueness states that black holes are completely determined by their mass, electrical charge and angular momentum.

Further important work in the context of general relativity followed, for example on the relativistic Boltzmann equation .

In 1990 he and Eric Poisson pioneered the study of the interior of black holes. Then - following a suggestion by Roger Penrose - he discovered mass inflation, which must not be confused with inflationary cosmology.

He is a fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's cosmology program . Until his retirement in 1996, he was a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta . In 1996 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Victoria . Together with Stephen Hawking , he edited two important anniversary volumes (on the 100th birthday of Albert Einstein in 1979 and 1987 on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of Isaac Newton's Principia ).

Awards

• 1972: Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• 1986: Fellow of the Royal Society
• 1993: Officer of the Order of Canada
• 1996: Tomalla Prize

Publications

• Werner Israel: The interior structure of black holes . In: Robert M. Wald (Ed.): Black Holes and Relativistic Stars . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998, pp. 1237-154, ISBN 0-226-87034-0 .
• W. Israel and E. Poisson: Internal structure of black holes . In: Physical Review D . Volume 41, 1990, pp. 1796-1809.
• SW Hawking and W. Israel (Eds.): Three Hundred Years of Gravitation . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, ISBN 0-521-34312-7 .
• SW Hawking and W. Israel (Eds.): General Relativity. An Einstein Centenary Survey . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1979, ISBN 0-521-22285-0
• W. Israel: Eventhorizons in static vacuum space-times . In: Physical Review . Volume 164, 1967, pp. 1776-1779.

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Israel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Werner Israel ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .